Toward a Bioregional State

Launched to provide an information service connected with _Toward a Bioregional State, the book; the blog is the commentary, your questions and my answers, and news from around the world related to the issues of sustainability and unsustainability in a running muse on various issues of concern or inspiration.

This is the last post of four on details toward the wider Ecological Reformationdiscussed previously. In this ongoing series of posts, we now discuss why we require an Ecological
Reformation in finance. In other words, sustainability and better democratic checks and balances require better
financial institutional changes.

As a recapitulation, the Ecological Reformation of the world has four parts: state, science/education,
consumption,
and finance (in this post). With this post, I have now published on all
four points. This includes of course a whole book on the state side,
concerning 'green constitutional engineering' in Toward a Bioregional State
(2005). Therefore, these other four shorter themes now complete the
topic of how to achieve a wider Ecological Reformation required for
sustainability. All are about the wider choice contexts and wider
ecological checks and balances required to fix corrupt centralized
clientelistic power in any venue (state, education, consumption, and
finance. As well, all themes touch on how to introduce these four changes of Ecological Reformation in piecemeal strategic fashion.

Unsustainability is a form of corruption that denies us choices and represses upon us unrepresentative and unregionally sound arrangements
in many areas of life--material, ideological, cultural, and
institutional (states, education, consumption, and finance). Our cash
money and credit/debt are just another one of the material commodities
in which we should have innate cash choices. Otherwise, a form of raw
material regime monopoly can clientelize
us as well as other materials more readily into consolidated monpolies
by its selective funding or withdrawal of funding. Therefore, finance
deserves its own category of
analysis for how to avoid such clientelistic relations in its large
social and material influence. The materials chosen
in finance matter, because finance plans the future. If the future is
planned from increasingly crony centralized arrangements of finance, in
materials without any choice of currency, we have a major problem to be
solved. So the Ecological Reformation includes demoting all monopolies
of finance worldwide, toward more
regionalized additions within those larger larger trading and conflict
resolution currency and credit/debt relations of larger frameworks
instead of only exchanging one kind of monopoly for another (only mere
regional solutions). Only a plurality of currency choices as something
we face daily will
lead us innately to sustainability as a series of more well organized
frameworks. Our innate ecological self-interest can work better in such
situations when we have a plurality of
more choices of regionally sound arrangements in finance. From that, we
can make less gatekept and more representative strategic decisions on
all major issues of material choice,
institutional arrangements, and culture(s). This can follow more readily
outside a monopoly of distant pursestrings.

First, a short lesson in U.S. money history applicable to any financial-political issues worldwide, in any country, in any era.

Below, ponder these quotes. There are two interrelated political problems in finance that the bioregional state seeks to avoid.

First, the main historical problem is to avoid state or a private monopoly of currency supply or its related monopoly on such groups setting everyone else's conditions of use. This is a corrupting and unrepresentative financial clientelism which should be avoided. It is a ground of many other corruptions and degradation later in any social relations if financial monopolies of any kind--state, private or now quasi-state or quasi-private international--are allowed to occur. Any singular currency regime worldwide is a danger. The solution is having plural currencies, an ecology of currencies as the base.

Second, the related main problem is that if such a situation occurs, particularly if it is achieved by a state monopoly, there can be an ongoing state-facilitated privatization of the whole money supply and political economy that blurs the public/private aspects of the oligarchy that manages it. If such a path continues to be chosen, it can lead to a coterie of self-perpetuating and increasingly nepotistic and crony capitalistic 'public/private' oligarchic families that manipulate, both up and down, financial scale of the money supply repeatedly to consolidate their wealth and to impoverish people repeatedly. The cultural social movement discourses of those that have a utopia of total public ownership or those who have a utopia of total private ownership ignore the basis of the phenomena is hardly public or private here, it is families and clientelism that are the problem. This is an ongoing neo-feudalization via financial monopoly. The solution is the same: an ecology of currencies--per different regions, per different levels of jurisdiction, kept as plural to avoid the feudalization possible from the political corruption that comes from any monopoly (state, private, or quasi mixtures of both). Financial monopolies create a modern nepotistic family-based feudalism, you say? Surely I'm in jest. Read on for the boldface:

"If the American people [or any people] ever allow
private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by
inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all
property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their
fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and
restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” –Thomas Jefferson"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse,
intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control
over governments by controlling money and its issuance." -James Madison

When the Second Bank of the United States 1816 charter expired in 1836, Andrew Jackson
vetoed its renewal. It was then that he made two famous statements: "The
Bank is trying to kill me - but I will kill it!" Later he said "If the
American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and
banking system - there would be a revolution before morning..." (Reference 4) [President Jackson escaped an attempted assassination at close range when both guns of an assassin locked up, failing to fire.]

"If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money,
it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals
or corporations." -Andrew Jackson

"Centralization of credit in the banks of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly" --Karl Marx/Frederich Engels, Fifth Plank of the Communist Manifesto"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute
master of all industry and commerce...and when you realize that the
entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few
powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of
inflation and depression originate." --James A. Garfield, president of the United States, assassinated."The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the
currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the
Government and the buying power of consumers [instead of by borrowing
the money with high interest from private bank sources, in other words,
we can create money ourselves without interest.]. By the adoption of
these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of
interest. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the
supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s
greatest creative opportunity.” -Abraham Lincoln, president of the
United States, assassinated.“The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man
in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went
anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their
craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant
riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization.”
Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor after the Lincoln
assassination

"This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on
earth. When the President [Wilson] signs this bill, the invisible
government of the monetary power will be legalized....the worst
legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and
currency bill." -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. , 1913"A
great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our
system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation,
therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who,
even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest,
are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which
their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of
their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic
freedom....We are at the parting of the
ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and
formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two,
but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not
impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted
credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled
development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of
the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the
civilized world -- no longer a government by the opinion and the
duress of small groups of dominant men." p. 185, 205, Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1911) In 1911 the U.S. Federal Reserve was established that year on Christmas Eve midnight actually: late night on December 24, 1911. The bill intentionally was introduced for vote at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve as monopolists wanted to be assured that all Congressional opposition was off on their holiday vacation.

1920: Congress abolishes the United States Treasury and establishes the Dept. of Treasury, in the Act of 1920 66th Congress session II ch. 214. "We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the
world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil
institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has
practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the
corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it." --
Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa), assassinated

MAY 23, 1933: On the House floor,
Congressman McFadden brought impeachment charges against many of the Federal Reserve Board Members, Federal Reserve agents of many
States, Comptroller of the Currency,
and several Secretaries of the United States
Treasury for high crimes and misdemeanors,
including the theft of eighty
billion dollars from the United States Government and with
committing the same thefts in 1929, 1930,
1931, 1932 and 1933 and in the years
previous to 1928, amounting to billions of dollars. These charges were remanded to the
Judiciary committee for
investigation, where these charges were effectively buried and until this day have never been answered.
[See Congressional Record pp. 4055-4058 May
23, 1933], McFadden survived several assassination attempts by gun and by poison. He died officially of 'heart failure' in 1936, though much evidence pointed to death by another successful attempt at poisoning. There was no autopsy.

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson…" -Franklin D. Roosevelt
(in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our
banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a
revolution before tomorrow morning.” -Henry Ford

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the
international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System
have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and
manipulates the credit of the United States." -Sen. Barry GoldwaterOn June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.

With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York out of business. If enough of these silver certificates were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the gevernment the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver. After Mr. Kennedy was assassinated just five months later [November 22, 1963], no more silver certificates were issued.

[And] just five months after Kennedy was assassinated, no more of the Series 1958 "Silver Certificates" were issued either, and they were subsequently removed from circulation.

"The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world." -Carroll Quigley, p. 324, Tragedy and Hope

"Will Israel be the first cashless [panopticon] society on the entire planet? A
committee chaired by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief
of staff has come up with a three phase plan to “all but do away with
cash transactions in Israel”. Individuals and businesses would still be
permitted to conduct cash transactions in small amounts (at least
initially), but the eventual goal is to force Israeli citizens to
conduct as much business as possible using electronic forms of payment. In fact, it has been reported that Israeli officials believe that “cash is bad”
because it fuels the underground economy and allows people to avoid
paying taxes. It is hoped that requiring most transactions to be
conducted in cash will reduce crime and help balance the national
budget. And once 98 or 99 percent of all transactions are cashless, it
will not be difficult for the Israeli government (or any other
government) to go the rest of the way and ban cash transactions
altogether. But is a cashless society actually desirable? This is a
question that people all over the world will have to start asking as
governments increasingly restrict the use of cash."

In Sweden, it is estimated that just 3 percent of all transactions involve cash at this point. In fact, according to an article in the Washington Post, some Swedish banks do not handle cash at all anymore…In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets are
prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing
number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices — which
make money on electronic transactions — have stopped handling cash
altogether. “There are towns where it isn’t at all possible anymore to enter a
bank and use cash,” complains Curt Persson, chairman of Sweden’s
National Pensioners’ Organization.

And the U.S. is starting to move in that direction as well. According to a study conducted by MasterCard, approximately 80 percent of all consumer transactions in the United States are now cashless.

But isn’t there a downside to all of this? Just about everything that we do in life involves money. So yes, a
government can track electronic payments to make sure taxes are being
paid and money laundering is not happening, but it would also enable a
government to do so much more. If a government can track all of your transactions, it will
essentially be able to monitor everywhere you go and pretty much keep
track of virtually everything that you do. If you doubt this, just try to live without any money some time. You won’t get very far without putting some gas in your vehicle. [soon mandated to be tracked as well in USA] And without being able to buy food, you will get hungry pretty quickly. Are you starting to understand? This is why [unrepresentative tyrannical] governments love the idea of moving toward a cashless
society. It would give them an immensely powerful surveillance tool. So let us hope that this does not happen in Israel or anywhere else in the world either."

"Four former Air Force drone pilots went public, exposing that many of
the Obama administration’s drone strikes have been indiscriminate murder
that has nothing to do with fighting Islamic terrorism. Since then,
they have had their bank accounts and credit cards frozen by the federal
government that they blew the whistle on."

So, to the contrary, cash is not bad. Cash is freedom.

First, cash is good because it provides a financial check and balance on governmental surveillance and it is against curtailment of your finances. Cash is freedom. It is innately a check on governmental power. It is effectively anonymous, which is good. There is a faux freedom from trackable online currencies like Bitcoin, which sell themselves as free though are far less free as all transactions are traceable. Why assume that such monstrosities like Bitcoin are freedom, when someone may have all the keys to the database?

Third, both points innately would be more sustainable: [1] to keep a green localized economy with its own green localized currencies [2] involved as checks and balances to maintain human civil rights via finance, and [3] to maintain economic regional rights as checks and balances economically and materially versus state cronyism, corruption, and unsustainability in rarefied material choices impressed on regions in a version of 'one size fails to fit all'.

However, this to be durable would likely require complementary currencies to be acceptable for taxes, i.e., legal tax rights in several currencies in question, instead of in only a singular monopolized currency. Tax rights payable in many currencies would institutionalize many different currencies more durably as well.

Fourth, continuing the ecological and financial theme, we can argue the opposite for how any centralized framework of monetary monopoly is bad to us as humans and bad to our environment. Lietaer argues that monetary centralization leads to liquidity crises--i.e., money siphoned out of local communities, taken away, and used as a form of triage to control people. Catherine Austin Fitts argues similarly. Lietaer has both a description of some difficulties with monopolistic centralized currencies and some examples of solutions in more "monetary diversity." Lietaer was on the team that 'invented the Euro,' though came to regret his handiwork as a corrupting financial monopoly that was endangering what he really valued: representation, sustainability, real regional community, and capacity building:

Bernard Lietaer: Money Diversity

Bernard Lietaer argues that the monoculture of money [combined of course with the oligarchs that use it intentionally this way, as Jefferson described above] is what creates
economic instability, leading to liquidity crises. He calls for a
greater diversity of alternative currencies, citing innovative and
enormously successful initiatives like the Lithuanian Doraland Economy,
the Torekes in Belgium and Switzerland's famous alternative currency,
the WIR.

Fifth, a lack of monetary diversity can as well lead to undue crony corrupt forms of success of the most corrupt, subsidized and consolidated. Therefore, to check against that crony consumptive consolidation we require monetary diversity as well.

Sixth, another difficulty with monopoly based currency arrangements is that much of the time, they are linked to the required growth of debt and suffering as the inbuilt mechanism for expanding the currency supply. This is perverse because it makes successful economies undermined by their own success and debt. These two issues of currency issuance and debt fail to have to be linked. There is little requirement that this link has to happen. However, in our modern (version of a feudal) world, it is widely used so private central banks or other commercial banks literally have the right to print money for nothing (via loans without any backing)--while they charge others to pay it back. So one of the best ways to get out of that systemic trap is to get out of a state associating the creation of money with the creation of debt.There are other ways:

TEDxFlanders - Bernard Lietaer - Implementation of Green Currency Systems; 95% Money Now Created Through Debt; So to Green Local Economies, Remove That Idea Entirely; Grow a Different Currency First

Lietaer argues that only an "ecology of currencies" can green economies to avoid undue crony corrupt uses of centralization in investment flows that singular monopoly currencies create.

However, those who have attempted such things tend to be assassinated by those associated with the very profitable and politically controllable world created by such currency monopolies. This is why it is important to move slowly on an Ecological Reformation of capacity building. Second, Lietaer has similar ideas to what has been argued by Catherine Austin Fitts in her attempts to popularize more localized currencies as means to keep wealth at regional home instead of flowing toward ever consolidating and destabalizing cash hordes in banks worldwide while local communities starve from funds. Third, historically this "Fittsian" idea has a working example--an example that worked so well that it was crushed. This is the story of Gesell's currency inventions in the 1930s Great Depression, a worldwide depression. Fourth, Gesell's story influenced the USA's history in the 1930s as well. This is additionally the story of President Franklin D. Roosevelt crushing massive American community currency movements in the 1930s, similar to how Austria crushed its own movements. Community currency worked so well to reduce poverty and demote banker jurisdiction over
the whole society that the Austrian and the American central private bank repressed it during the
1930s!!
Read on:

--------------------

excerpt:

In 1890 Silvio Gesell formulated a theory of money as
revolutionary as the notion that it is the Earth that circles the sun,
rather than the other way around -- despite appearances. Gesell
suggested securing the money flow by making money a governmental service
subject to a use fee. Instead of paying interest to those who have more
money than they need, people would pay a small fee if they kept money
out of circulation. The fee would serve as an income to the government
and reduce the amount of taxes needed to carry out public tasks."

Gesell's ideas were tested by the mayor of Woergl, Austria in July
1932 when economic conditions were deplorable. The mayor proposed to
substitute a local currency for the national currency. They were called
work certificates and on the first of every month the holder had to
affix a 1 percent stamp of the face value of the certificate. The
"taxes" went into the community chest, to provide a relief fund for the
invalids or elderly who were unable to work. Because of the stamp tax,
taxes were paid quickly; accounts were settled without the usual delays,
even the bank became eager to loan out the money, as fast as it
received it.

The mayor was then able to embark upon his Public Works Program, "to
alleviate want, give work and bread" which exceeded his highest hopes.
The conditions of the streets of Woergl had been a standing joke of the
surrounding country. In less than four months sewers and improvements
were completed. Later, other streets were paved and streets outside of
Woergl repaired. Prosperity blossomed.

***A meeting of 200 Austrian mayors decided unanimously to follow
the Woergl example*** in their impoverished communities. Then the
private Austrian National Bank....

Read the rest below.

Reinventing Money, Restoring the Earth, Reweaving the Web of Life
by Carol Brouillet
["Permission is granted to print this article in whole or in part."]

....In theory,
money is supposed to activate the production of goods and services; to
simplify exchanges and the settlement of debts, to provide a means of
storing values or savings. Money has one other major function -- it is a
tool of empire.

The film Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladahk
chronicles in detail Helena Norberge-Hodge's observations of a
nonmonetized culture, rich in Buddhist spiritual traditions, with an
intricate system of family and social ties, disrupted by modern forces.
In a place where ninety percent of the land was evenly distributed
amongst families, where people lived ecologically and sustainably off
the land, where almost everyone knew how to build a house and meet all
of their basic needs -- a road to India, tourism, and the monetized
economy has been disastrous for the culture. Apparently the weak link
in the cultural fabric are the young men who are seduced by the toys of
Western Civilization and abandon their traditions in search of the quick
buck and the "surface glamour of the modern world." Where money
intrudes, greed is kindled and the gift economy languishes.

In Debt Virus, Dr. Jaikaran writes: "The most
pernicious of all viruses is the one that confiscates the wealth of the
productive elements of society and transfers it to the hands of a
nonproductive few." The monetary system, based upon debt, functions to
transfer land, money and wealth from the many to the few.

In the past, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Rome fell when a
small percentage of the population controlled nearly all of the wealth.
Today 358 people are worth the combined income of 45% of the planet's
population -- 2.5 billion people. The rich have never been richer nor
the poor poorer. Greed and fear are manifested in our dominant
institutions, bloated military budgets, the growth of the prison and
"security" industries, the glorification of warriors. What cannot be
controlled by force, is controlled by money.

The origins of modern banking can be traced back to
the days when goldsmiths began giving out receipts for gold that they
safeguarded. They soon realized that the receipts were more useful for
business transactions than heavy amounts of gold. Some enterprising
goldsmith figured out that large amounts of gold weren't even necessary
to insure the utility of receipts; the goldsmith began loaning gold and
receipts at interest, hence the birth of the fractional reserve system
and "debt money."

When money is created by the banks and loaned to
governments or business at interest, it is mathematically impossible to
pay back all the money with interest. Not all debts can be repaid;
foreclosures occur. Wealth is continually transferred from the poor to
the rich.

Bankers, like magicians, do not like to reveal their
secrets. Able to create money out of thin air; they have learned that
belief of belief is the key to their success. When people begin to doubt
the purchasing power of money, banks fail; a currency collapses.

In 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the ruling
elite decided to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank to smooth the way for their domination of the world economy.
Working hand in hand with elites in other countries throughout the
world, the "Bretton Woods Institutions" have forcibly resettled more
than ten million of the poorest people on the planet, many of them
indigenous minorities. This means taking away their land, destroying
their production systems, weakening their community structures,
dispersing kin, cultural identity, traditional authority and potential
mutual help. Anthropologist Thayer Scudder insists that "resettlement is
about the worst thing you can do to people, next to killing them." The
World Bank's projects, particularly in the Earth's forests, mineral
deposits, and rivers, are the most destructive on the planet. Its
support of repressive regimes has exacerbated human rights violations.

Money has flowed from the poor countries to the rich
industrialized nations. The Structural Adjustment Programs forced upon
nations by the World Bank and the IMF have meant shifting food
production from domestic needs to export crops, devaluing the local
currency to encourage exports, cutting social spending on health and
education, reducing wages, privatizing national industries, selling off
their natural resources, and removing tariff protections for local
industries. Hunger, unemployment, hardship and inequality are the direct
and calculated results of World Bank policies.

...

Its time to change the rules of the global money
game. Some of the groundwork has already been laid; we need to build
upon it. The best way to predict the future is to create it. By creating
opportunities for people to shift their energy, resources and time from
a destructive global economy to a healthy, meaningful, nurturing
economy; we could ease the transition dramatically.

In 1890 Silvio Gesell formulated a theory of money
as revolutionary as the notion that it is the Earth that circles the
sun, rather than the other way around -- despite appearances. Gesell
suggested securing the money flow by making money a governmental service
subject to a use fee. Instead of paying interest to those who have more
money than they need, people would pay a small fee if they kept money
out of circulation. The fee would serve as an income to the government
and reduce the amount of taxes needed to carry out public tasks.

Gesell's ideas were tested by the mayor of Woergl,
Austria in July 1932 when economic conditions were deplorable. The mayor
proposed to substitute a local currency for the national currency. They
were called work certificates and on the first of every month the
holder had to affix a 1 percent stamp of the face value of the
certificate. The "taxes" went into the community chest, to provide a
relief fund for the invalids or elderly who were unable to work. Because
of the stamp tax, taxes were paid quickly; accounts were settled
without the usual delays, even the bank became eager to loan out the
money, as fast as it received it.

The mayor was then able to embark upon his Public
Works Program, "to alleviate want, give work and bread" which exceeded
his highest hopes. The conditions of the streets of Woergl had been a
standing joke of the surrounding country. In less than four months
sewers and improvements were completed. Later, other streets were paved
and streets outside of Woergl repaired.. Prosperity blossomed.

A meeting of 200 Austrian mayors decided unanimously
to follow the Woergl example in their impoverished communities. Then
the private Austrian National Bank protested against the shattering of
its money making monopoly. After a legal fight, the Austrian Supreme
Court sided with the bank.

In 1933 advocates of "Stamp Scrip," abounded. There
were three or four hundred scrips in circulation in the United States,
Canada and Mexico. A top economist urged Roosevelt to encourage local
currencies. However F.D.R opted for "The New Deal" which [confiscated civil wealth in hard currency in gold and] flooded the
nation with Federal Reserve Notes, put an end to the currency
experiments, and effectively centralized power....

----------------

Comments: I take this panicked reaction from the German or American state currency monopolists as a sign that such community currency ideas are innately successful since they clearly work in their hydra-headed way. However, by setting up such a showdown between local 'versus' wider national currencies, this is obviously dangerous to the central crony degradative jurisdictional control and thus it is dangers to maintaining the political conditions that encourage such community currency successes--that were revoked when the central private bankers felt threatened.

So however, to be pragmatic, this means we have to implement such community issues of an ongoing mixed monetary diversity--keeping the current arrangements and just adding more complementary arrangements to them instead of the complete rejection of the latter state currencies that caused such a violent reaction in crony state elites and left little of the community currency movement in its wake.

In conclusion, a plan is:

- multiple monies and monetary diversity: multiple money with equal rights to be legal tender for all debts public and private; this means multiple allowances of state level currencies and federal currencies to be tax currencies for states and federal differently, with other forms of complementary currency acceptable as local tax issues.

- Gessel currencies in local governments as complementary currencies instead of the sole currencies--equally used in legal taxation forcing governments to use them and thus re-spend them in the requisite area in which they were taxed.

- complementary currencies per watershed or per CDI

- In a federal or provincial system, multiple more regional state banks can serve as a check and balance both on federal consolidated financial policies and consolidated private bank (Wall Street) interests (which are mostly one in the same). The dynamics of the Bank of North Dakota, the United States only
State level state bank and how it challenges the centralized crony
capitalist malfeasance of the federal-Wall Street nexus, and how North
Dakota wins by being complementary to the larger context and filling up
the federal and Wall Street triage space, forcing them into better
deals by the financial competition. During the 2008 market crashes in
the USA, only North Dakota looked good economically and financially. It
proved Lietaer correct: monetary diversity per region makes more
sustainable economies, and makes social relations without the liquidity
crises of monopolies from the state or consolidated banks. Markets to
work require financial competition, particularly lending arrangements.

Bank of North Dakota25 min.

Chronicles the Bank of North Dakota's fascinating history and reviews its key role in financing the state's economic future. During the early 1900s, North Dakota's economy was dangerously dependent on a single industry—agriculture, an industry controlled by financial interests outside the state. To diversify the economy and regain control of its financial future, North Dakota created a unique asset: the state-owned Bank of North Dakota. North Dakota is the only state in the union with a state-owned bank. The program documents the rise of the Non-Partisan League and its struggle to overthrow the out of state interests that controlled the North Dakota economy and chronicles the political infighting, the dirty tricks, the back room deals, and the amazing series of events that led to the creation of the bank. "The Bank of North Dakota" features historians, economists, bank staff members and members of the Industrial Commission discussing how the bank came into existence, how it has responded over the years to its mission, and its evolving role in promoting commerce, agriculture and industry.

To conclude, instead of single money policy, there should be instituted a plurality of monies in check and balance for consumer freedom, for civic/human rights, and to avoid the crony capitalism of a central private bank or the crony capitalism of entirely privatized banking sector both of which are leading toward international feudalism by international placeless capital.

So more durable and plural regional monies in the bioregional state is a financial check and balance on unrepresentative consolidated currencies and monopolies. All different monies should read "this is one of many currency options for legal tender, and for settling debts both public and private."

These multiple layers of money are in check and balance. Only in this situation, once one is seen as unstable or corruptly used, people can vacate it easily to other currencies. This in itself is a way for a corrupt use of currency to reform itself or fade out. However, if it were a corrupt currency and a monopoly currency, there is little way for such kind of financial, democratic, and market feedback to make the administration of the currency policies better in that currency.

Only competitive currencies free people, remove corruption, and lead toward sustainability as a consequence of their plurality that encourages all currencies to compete to be used.

The wider ideas of the Ecological Reformation are that checks and balances are extended beyond the state into the larger society, with forms of checks and balance in finance in this second.

The wider ideas of commodity choice are here as well as checks and balances between different material choices maintained in their social use categories as a principle of politics instead of dominated by one particular material, or rather, one particular social group's preferred material. So the issue of money comes up only as a form of illustration of the general principle of commodity choice in all commodity categories. In an unsustainable society, money is sculpted by corrupt interest to be more toward a means of placeless exchange instead of a store of value. Therefore the two principles of money--means of exchange and store of value--are what are to be placed in a check and balance relationship. This is an example of the financial extensions into Ecological Reformation--green constitutional engineering beyond the state is required since the dynamics of society are involved in four main areas instead of only state politics: state, finance, consumption, and sciences.

In short, in a corrupt society, there is a monetary and credit monopoly, with local regions starved for funds, triaged, and under massive debt loads that only make the difficulties worse. It can only be solved in this way:

In a more representative society, citizens will have more monetary choices of store of value currencies and exchange based currencies. Local states will have their own money of course, in addition to forms of wider debt/credit access. State taxes shall be payable with the state money or the federal money, the competition between the two keeps the state budgeting honest and without inflation. So as inflation strikes one currency, people can easily pay their debts public and private with the closer store of value currency.

About Me

A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.